ON BEING TOO KIND TO BOOKS

I was always taught to be kind to books and to treat them with respect. A bit like elderly relatives. Don't fold the spine back, you'll break it, don't draw moustaches on the pictures of Noddy. Never write in the margins.

But isn't there something wonderfully subversive about defacing books? You can make your own wise observations then return them to the charity shop. Something profound, not too obscene. It's good to show your ignorance here. Try jotting 'over the top' with exclamation marks in the middle of Hamlet, or 'pathetic fallacy' almost anywhere. Poems are easy to notate with comments such as 'imagery!' or 'why not iambic pentameter?' But if you want really profound marginalia there's nothing better than the cryptic shopping list. 'Jam' for instance or 'quail eggs' will keep readers guessing for years.

That's why I've taken to buying paperbacks from Oxfam. I can make my own notes. What works, what doesn't. Is it a good story? How did she do that? Why?

Deep in pencil markings the novel almost looks more loved. And there's nobody looking over my shoulder asking me what I think I'm doing.

LOSING A GRIP ON REALITY

Isn't it reassuring to know that according to a recent survey nearly one in four people believe Winston Churchill was a myth and more than half think Sherlock Holmes was a real detective who lived in Baker Street?

This is great news for us fiction readers and writers. According to newspaper reports on the survey Britons are 'losing a grip on fact and fiction.' But isn't that what fiction is for? What's the point having it if you can't actually believe in it?

So I'm all for blurring the boundaries between fiction and (so-called) reality. Gandhi was produced from the fevered imagination of a film writer, but Wing Commander Bigglesworth lived and flew shaky kites in the south of England from around 1915 to 1964 when he was pensioned off from the RAF at the age of seventy. Heathcliffe is real of course. Richard the Lionheart is made up. Wasn't he in that cartoon about Robin Hood? And 47% believe Charles Dickens was a myth! In that case who wrote Mr Micawber? Perhaps Dickens was an invention of his own characters after all. Did Oliver Twist write a book called Charles Dickens?

The real irony though is that the highest accolade for a real person is to 'achieve mythical status' like Churchill and the highest achievement for a fictional person, like good old Sherlock, is to become human. Sort that one out.

TEST: Be honest - who did you think was real? Who do you wish was fictional.